I'm an Assistant Professor of Economics at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, a Research Fellow with the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute, a Senior Fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee, and a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics. I'm on Twitter: @artcarden.

Let's Be Blunt: It's Time to End the Drug War

April 20 is the counter-culture “holiday” on which lots and lots of people come together to advocate marijuana legalization (or just get high). Should drugs—especially marijuana—be legal? The answer is “yes.” Immediately. Without hesitation. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 seized in a civil asset forfeiture. The war on drugs has been a dismal failure. It’s high time to end prohibition. Even if you aren’t willing to go whole-hog and legalize all drugs, at the very least we should legalize marijuana.

For the sake of the argument, let’s go ahead and assume that everything you’ve heard about the dangers of drugs is completely true. That probably means that using drugs is a terrible idea. It doesn’t mean, however, that the drug war is a good idea.

Prohibition is a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended consequences. Literally: it’s an example in the textbook I use in my introductory economics classes (Cowen and Tabarrok, Modern Principles of Economics if you’re curious) and in the most popular introductory economics textbook in the world (by N. Gregory Mankiw).The demand curve for drugs is extremely inelastic, meaning that people don’t change their drug consumption very much in response to changes in prices. Therefore, vigorous enforcement means higher prices and higher revenues for drug dealers. In fact, I’ll defer to Cowen and Tabarrok—page 60 of the first edition, if you’re still curious—for a discussion of the basic economic logic:

The more effective prohibition is at raising costs, the greater are drug industry revenues. So, more effective prohibition means that drug sellers have more money to buy guns, pay bribes, fund the dealers, and even research and develop new technologies in drug delivery (like crack cocaine). It’s hard to beat an enemy that gets stronger the more you strike against him or her.

People associate the drug trade with crime and violence; indeed, the newspapers occasionally feature stories about drug kingpins doing horrifying things to underlings and competitors. These aren’t caused by the drugs themselves but from the fact that they are illegal (which means the market is underground) and addictive (which means demanders aren’t very price sensitive).

Those same newspapers will also occasionally feature articles about how this or that major dealer has been taken down or about how this or that quantity of drugs was taken off the streets. Apparently we’re to take from this the idea that we’re going to “win” the war on drugs. Apparently. It’s alleged that this is only a step toward getting “Mister Big,” but even if the government gets “Mister Big,” it’s not going to matter. Apple didn’t disappear after Steve Jobs died. Getting “Mr. Big” won’t win the drug war. As I pointed out almost a year ago, economist and drug policy expert Jeffrey Miron estimates that we would have a lot less violence without a war on drugs.

At the recent Association of Private Enterprise Education conference, David Henderson from the Naval Postgraduate School pointed out the myriad ways in which government promises to make us safer in fact imperil our safety and security. The drug war is an obvious example: in the name of making us safer and protecting us from drugs, we are actually put in greater danger. Without meaning to, the drug warriors have turned American cities into war zones and eroded the very freedoms we hold dear.

Freedom of contract has been abridged in the name of keeping us “safe” from drugs. Private property is less secure because it can be seized if it is implicated in a drug crime (this also flushes the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty” out the window). The drug war has been used as a pretext for clamping down on immigration. Not surprisingly, the drug war has turned some of our neighborhoods into war zones. We are warehousing productive young people in prisons at an alarming rate all in the name of a war that cannot be won.

Albert Einstein is reported to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By this definition, the drug war is insane. We are no safer, and we are certainly less free because of concerted efforts to wage war on drugs. It’s time to stop the insanity and end prohibition.

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I think it’s strange that your valid points are being interpreted by so many as being in opposition to the message of the article. You touch on a very important issue, that the growth and militarization of the police force is fueled only by the drug war. It’s unfortunate your clever wording is being so misinterpreted, but here is my voice to say “Well done”. :)

In that case, there is no unjust imprisonment? There is no wrongful incarceration so long as your government can make new laws to find people guilty of? What a cop-out. What a coward you are. People like you deserve to be oppressed and enslaved, to have your liberties stolen from you. If only there were a way to do that without affecting anyone else.

The only crimes are ones in which someone has been hurt by the action of another.

By shouting at people ‘its illegal’ you are only hurting those who are innocent of hurting anyone. You are the criminal, because you enjoy controlling the lives of others and having an excuse to bully and push them around.

Unjust and illegal are two different things. For you to not realize this makes me highly doubt you have any intelligence at all. Let’s look back at some famous times in history where the laws were unjust: slavery, non-caucasian people not being allowed to vote, females not being allowed to vote, etc.

The prison system is an example of just how impossible it is to “win” the war on drugs. Prisons are, by design, the most restrictive environments for human beings to occupy–and they are rotten with drugs. Even in some nightmare scenario where our rights are restricted to the extent that we live as prisoners in this country, drugs will remain. Ending the way the war on drugs has been executed isn’t the same thing as losing the war. It represents a change of tactics and changing the strategy to reflect an understanding of harm analysis. Does drug addiction, even widespread drug addiction, cause more harm to society than a legal system that destroys personal liberty and threatens our bodily safety with increasing regularity? Harvey Silvergate’s book, Three Felonies a Day and Radley Balko’s white paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America Provide some sobering reading on the topic.

The prison system is an example of just how impossible it is to “win” the war on drugs. Prisons are, by design, the most restrictive environments for human beings to occupy–and they are rotten with drugs. Even in some nightmare scenario where our rights are restricted to the extent that we live as prisoners in this country, drugs will remain. Ending the way the war on drugs has been executed isn’t the same thing as losing the war. It represents a change of tactics and changing the strategy to reflect an understanding of harm analysis. Does drug addiction, even widespread drug addiction, cause more harm to society than a legal system that destroys personal liberty and threatens our bodily safety with increasing regularity? Radley Balko’s white paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America Provides some sobering reading on the topic.